Quotes from this zine:
Most anthropologists regard the beginnings of agriculture as the inception of civilization. It was this first act of control over the land that brought human beings to think of themselves as distinct from nature, that forced them to become sedentary and possessive, that led to the eventual development of private property and capitalism. But why would hunter/gatherers, whose environment already provided them with all the food they needed, lock themselves in place and give up the nomadic foraging existence they had practiced since the beginning of time for something they already had? It seems more likely – and here, there are anthropologists who agree – that the first ones to domesticate themselves did so in order to brew beer.
I don't want to be that person, but who? Like, I'm genuinely curious to read more about that kind of idea or development, and you're throwing this shit with no sources. (And I'm not about to say anthropologists are bastions of knowledge or perfection, but I'd really like to see evidence about this when such a claim is made.)
This is one of the first things I found, and it only says "to grow carbs." While beer is made out of the same sorts of things, it indicates a shift of diet and not a propensity for alcoholism. Meanwhile, this one outlines drug use in other cultures (though, rather than taking it at its word, it is a jumping off point), but the author does mention that band societies engaged with it on a different level than people settling in towns and cities.
This drastic reorganization for the sake of intoxication must have shaken tribal structure and lifeways to the root. Where these “primitive” peoples had once lived in a relaxed and attentive relationship to the providing earth – a relationship that afforded them both personal autonomy and supportive community as well as a great deal of leisure time to spend in admiration of the enchanted world around them – they now alternated periods of slavish hard labor with periods of drunken incompetence and detachment. It’s not hard to imagine that this situation hastened, if not necessitated, the rise to power of masters, overseers who saw to it that the toilsome tasks of fixed living were carried out by the frequently inebriated and incapable tribespeople. Without these chiefs and the primitive judicial systems they instituted, it must have seemed that life itself would be impossible: and thus, under the foul auspices of alcoholism, the embryonic State was conceived.
While I can see the point being made, something about this feels either too generalised or ahistorical. Ancient societies that had alcohol also saw excessive drinking as a problem. Not all societies immediately started getting drunk out of their minds?
Again, I'd really like to see research behind this or additional sources where I can read more, but there is nothing of the sort in this zine (nor is their an online component to visit for more information).
Another perspective that might actually help out here is that people were domesticated by wheat (though I've never really explored that outside the handful of mentions of Yuval Noah Harari's work). It's an interesting concept to explore.
Either way, evidence would be nice.
... but as every historian knows, the spread of civilization was anything but voluntary. Lacking the manners and gentleness of their former companions in the wild, these savages, in their drunken excesses and infringements, must have provoked a series of wars – wars which, sadly, the lushes were able to win, owing to the military efficiency of their autocratic armies and the steady supply of food their subjugated farmlands provided.
This is really falling on the Noble Savage trope in order to highlight problems, which I think is a poor direction to go when you can make the same point without using it.
The first collection of laws, the Code of Hammurabi of Babylon, decreed a daily beer ration in direct proportion to social status: beer consumption went hand-in-hand with hierarchy. For example, workers received two liters while besotted priests and kings got five. [For an interesting thought experiment, ask yourself how much alcohol – and of what grade – you get now, and what that says about your position in society.]
What do you say if a person... doesn't drink? In this manner, either you're going to be moralising them as superior or you're going to imply they're not getting enough.
Either way, this is an interesting structure, though the point feels hit and miss. While it'd be interesting to explore and understand beer's importance in the hierarchy, there is quite a lot of information left unsaid: What was the importance of beer in this time (beyond the mere conjecture of "some historians")? Which historians are you referring to? It'd be nice to have references to look through because it honestly could be interesting to explore, but it's left unsaid.
Only those human beings that still lived in harmony with wilderness, such as the indigenous peoples of North America and some sectors of Africa, remained alcohol-free – for a time.
Is this strictly true, though? And even if they didn't have alcohol, they did have access to mind-altering plants.
But what's being missed in this discussion is the point that should be said bluntly: colonisers used alcohol as a way to interfere in Indigenous cultures. This is too vague for the point they're claiming they're making, and it's dancing around it too much. It's weird.
I'm also interested in why the author doesn't mention: - Sura (from the Indus Valley), which is a beverage brewed of rice meal, wheat, sugar cane, grapes, and other fruits; - Pulque, balché, or xtabentún (from Mesoamerica); - Chicha (from South America)
And then there's this bit of revival from the Palawa people in Tasmania, which the author couldn't have predicted at the time of writing (though it's obvious it could've happened with the frequent Noble Savage tropes being tossed about).
Another thing: Why the focus on beer as opposed to wine? (And when discussing peoples who were most likely predominantly drinking wine, why is that detail omitted? It's intriguing.)
It’s no exaggeration, then, to say that alcohol has played a key role in the epidemic of fascism, racism, statism, imperialism, colonialism, sexism and patriarchy, class oppression, ungoverned technological development, religious superstition, and other bad stuff that has swept the earth over the past few millennia.
... So has the medical profession. Correlation does not equal causation. Alcohol is not the inherent problem, and I'm saying that as a person who rarely (if ever) has any. Has it been used as a tool for colonisation? Of course. Does that mean that it didn't exist in cultures beforehand? That's false and ahistorical; it's also telling when you're willing to redefine "alcohol" to mean beer (while other forms existed).
It's also telling that the author didn't want to consider how it was used in other non-European cultures. Then again, this comment is meant to be strongly worded and to push you into associating it with fascism: "As for other links between alcohol and far-right/fascist activity – perhaps the reader will recall where Hitler initiated his takeover of Germany."
Yet, the fact of the matter is that Hitler didn't drink much. He didn't abstain, but he drank very little. It doesn't matter, though. People would find ways to make nonsensical connections regardless (as they have with painting and vegetarianism), and this is equally as rubbish.
It’s not widely remembered that strict vegetarianism and abstinence from drink have been common in radical circles for many centuries.
It's also been common among non-radicals and conservatives, you absolute weirdo. What a load of garbage moralising. Does eating meat make you a fascist? No. Does eating a lot of it perpetuate industrial-scale farming of animals, which harms the planet? Yes, especially if everyone's doing it.
Can you make a salient point at all?
On the other side of the coin – can you imagine how much more progress we would have made in this struggle already if anti-authoritarians such as Nestor Makhno, Guy Debord, Janis Joplin, and countless anarcho-punks had focused more energy on the creation and destruct ion they loved so dearly, and less on drinking themselves to death?
Can you imagine what a world would be like if people didn't pathologise everything? Can you imagine what it'd be like to literally fight for everything against multiple armies, knowing that the Bolsheviks had executed the people acting as your subordinate commanders? Which was the case for Makhno (who died of tuberculosis).
And what about people who were known to have depression, as is the case of Debourd? And we are aware that Janis Joplin didn't drink herself to death but overdosed on drugs? Yet, we don't know why, though we know people suspect her overdose wasn't accidental.
Interesting that, rather than compassion, it's moralising again and again; there's a demand that they should've stayed alive to serve us (instead of us taking up their mantel). It's obvious and telling that so many people don't want to engage in elements of actual mental health or chronic illness/disability, which are communities that frequently overlap.
These polemics are more harm than good. They're inaccurate and nonsensical.
All the same, we can learn from this past, as from each other, if we apply our imaginations and a keen eye for pattern.
While patterns are important for learning, not all patterns are meaningful. This assumed pattern is littered with holes; the only pattern that can functionally be followed is that of how settler colonialists used alcohol (and other drugs) to subjugate and control people.
But there are also people among the ancestors of those we claim to be subjugated who state that even this mentality removes agency from their people, which I think is important to consider. (It should not, however, be used as a way to deny the actions of our ancestors.)
Even if you do decide that this history of alcoholism is “the” truth, for heaven’s sake don’t waste time looking back into the past for some long-lost state of primitive sobriety that – for all any of us know – may not even have existed.
Then what was the point of your polemic? To infuriate the readers with gaps and inciting language instead of inform them? To then undermine it all by directly contradicting the usage of your beautiful uses of the frequently referenced Noble Savage tropes? What is the purpose in any of this?
Those drunken despots and beer-bellied bigots may destroy their world and smother beneath their history, but we bear a new future in our hearts – and the power to enact it in our healthy livers.
Again with the moralising. It's always easier to insult and deride people and their vices rather than create spaces where reliance upon them decreases. I genuinely am frustrated by people like this.
Side note to the whole piece: Why use the word "civilisation" at all?
